NewsTrust Hopes to Digg the Best Online Journalism

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Another social news sharing service is in beta testing, NewsTrust, which hopes to use a Digg style format to help users find the best journalism online and not just the most popular stories.

Unlike Digg, Reddit, Netscape and other services which base the popularity of online news in a single vote, NewsTrust’s rating system is based on 10 voting criteria:

That’s a whole lot of criteria, but the end result should be incredibly relevant and reflective of quality journalism and the NewsTrust mission. And yes, NewsTrust is a non-profit venture, which kind of fortifies it as a form of Wikipedia of Social News Sites.

In recent years, the consolidation of mainstream media, combined with the rise of opinion news and the explosion of new media outlets, have created a serious problem for democracy: many people feel they can no longer trust the news media to deliver the information they need as citizens.

To address this critical issue, NewsTrust is developing an online news rating service to help people identify quality journalism – or “news you can trust.” Our members rate the news online, based on journalistic quality, not just popularity. Our beta website and news feed feature the best and the worst news of the day, picked from hundreds of alternative and mainstream news sources.

This non-profit community effort tracks news media nationwide and helps citizens make informed decisions about democracy. Submitted stories and news sources are carefully researched and rated for balance, fairness and originality by panels of citizen reviewers, students and journalists. Their collective ratings, reviews and tags are then featured in our news feed, for online distribution by our members and partners.